HRC Blog

Kicking Off HRC’s Celebration of National Adoption Month 2012

It’s been 17 years since President Bill Clinton declared November “National Adoption Month,” a time to focus on finding permanent families for children and youth in foster care. As we kick off the 2012 National Adoption Month celebration there are 104,000 children and youth in need of a “forever” family and, shockingly, qualified LGBT individuals and couples continue to face discrimination and bias in their pursuit of becoming one of those loving, forever families.

HRC’s All Children—All Families initiative has helped to chisel away at those barriers and to build bridges between the thousands of prospective LGBT adoptive parents and the thousands of children who are waiting in foster care.

Since launching in 2007, we have engaged over 100 agencies in implementing our LGBT-inclusive policies and practices, and thousands of adoption professionals have attended our workshops, webinars and downloaded our Promising Practices guide. In recognition of National Adoption Month we have just published our 4th edition of this guide with new and expanded content on all aspects of welcoming, supporting and affirming LGBT adoptive families.

Through the important work of the All Children—All Families initiative and our organizational partners we see a steadily increasing number of LGBT applicants stepping into journey of adoption, many of whom hope to adopt from foster care.